Saturday, March 24, 2007

Spoke Lore

Bike-only lanes for Sydney!

It's been a long time coming but at last all our lobbying has paid off and Clover Moore has delivered the goods, it's very exciting, who knows? Maybe one day we will all live in a beautiful, pollution free city full of fit, happy and active people.

THE City of Sydney has finally released its cycling plan, which proposes an extra 55 kilometres of separated bike lanes throughout the council area.The two-way lanes would be separated from cars by bollards or kerbs. The lanes are the part of the Cycle Strategy and Action Plan that seems likely to be approved by the council on Monday.But the plan has taken almost two years to create, after Clover Moore decided to shelve the previous council's cycling policies and start again when she became Lord Mayor in 2004.A spokesman for Cr Moore said the old plan had not included bike-only lanes or sufficiently linked the paths through the city.The new plan will cost at least $1.7 million between now and 2010, with construction slated to begin in June. The city may apply to the Roads and Traffic Authority and the Department of Planning for extra funds.Some of the streets earmarked for the proposed two-way cycle lanes include Castlereagh Street, in the city; Crown Street, Surry Hills; Missenden Road, Newtown; and Abercrombie Street, Chippendale.A council survey of 1150 residents living within 10 kilometres of the central business district found that 21 per cent rode a bicycle at least once a month but four out of five non-regular cyclists were put off by traffic.The council aims to increase city cycling by 500 per cent (sixfold) in the next 10 years."Reducing road congestion and introducing cycleways encourages cycling and walking, improves pedestrian amenity, enables public spaces to be upgraded, humanising a city and adding to the quality of life," Cr Moore said yesterday.The chief executive of Bicycle NSW, Alex Unwin, welcomed the plan. "I would say this is an excellent piece of leadership from the City of Sydney," he said yesterday, calling on the NSW Government to follow suit."This isn't about politics, this is about good public policy. I think that the State Government is certainly playing catch-up on the cycling infrastructure. Their attention has been focused on major transport projects, specifically major road projects."Mr Unwin said cycling should be seen as a health and environment issue, not just a transport one: "If you have a five-kilometre ride to work and instead of driving you ride and it's safe, over the year you will save a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions."Noel McFarlane, of Bicycle Industries Australia, said NSW was behind other states in per capita funding for cycling infrastructure."This has changed over the last eight years," he said. "The Carl Scully period at the RTA was one where cycling was taken quite seriously. Under Costa this negative direction began and it's continued under Roozendaal."He pointed to the closure of the William Street and M2 cycling lanes.Mr McFarlane said the Government should investigate buses that allowed bicycles to be carried on the front, and City of Sydney said it would advocate that the requirement to purchase a ticket for a bicycle on a train during peak hour be lifted.An RTA spokesman said there were already more than 3600 kilometres of cycleway in NSW and that the Government had provided more than $220 million towards bicycle programs since 1999, including a cycle lane next to the M7.Councils can apply each financial year to the RTA for funding under the cycleway program for local projects, and more than $3 million is earmarked to match council contributions for 85 local bicycle projects.Mr McFarlane said this should be more like $50 million."In the context of their expenditure on vehicular infrastructure, then $50 million is not much money," he said.